Neil’s Nuggets – Silversandshttps://www.silversands.co.uk
Microsoft Gold Partner specialising in Office 365 and Azure Cloud / HybridWed, 11 Sep 2019 10:31:15 +0000en-GB
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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.2.3#9 Exchange Online Recipient Limit Changeshttps://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/exchange-online-recipient-limit-changes/
https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/exchange-online-recipient-limit-changes/#respondWed, 11 Sep 2019 10:27:27 +0000https://www.silversands.co.uk/?p=6679An organisation moving to Office 365 can consider reviewing the service descriptions that provide details on the services and features that are available in Office 365. Take the Exchange Online service description for example. It is broken down into multiple sections, providing important information for service areas such as migration options, permissions, anti-malware protection and …

]]>An organisation moving to Office 365 can consider reviewing the service descriptions that provide details on the services and features that are available in Office 365. Take the Exchange Online service description for example. It is broken down into multiple sections, providing important information for service areas such as migration options, permissions, anti-malware protection and how Microsoft provides high availability for the service.

As part of a move to Exchange Online, an organisation can also consider understanding any limits imposed in Exchange Online and how these may differ from any on-premises equivalent settings. The Exchange Online Limits section of the Exchange Online service description covers limits for a variety of service areas. One of these service areas is ‘sending limits’, which includes something known as the recipient limit.

The Exchange Online service description states that the recipient limit is the ‘maximum number of recipients allowed in the To:, Cc:, and Bcc: fields for a single email message‘. Currently, Microsoft sets the recipient limit to 500 recipients as seen in the Sending limits across Office 365 options table in the Exchange Online service description.

A common question asked when discussing recipient limits is how distribution groups count towards them. Fortunately Microsoft also clarifies this within the service description, stating that:

Distribution groups stored in the address book count as a single recipient

Each recipient in a personal distribution group counts towards the recipient limit

Therefore, an organisation that has a requirement for one or more Exchange Online mailboxes, to be able to send to more than 500 recipients in a single message would need to look at using distribution groups stored in the address book. This would then bring up other considerations, such as restricting who is able to send to these distribution groups to avoid potential misuse.

This roadmap item is interesting because it covers considerations in changing the recipient limit from two different angles. Firstly, there’s the scenario to increase the recipient limit for one or more mailboxes that need to send to more than 500 recipients. As discussed above, distribution groups could be considered as a workaround in this scenario, but there are potential administrative overhead considerations with this.

Secondly, there’s the scenario to reduce the value of 500 recipients to something lower. The roadmap feature ID text discusses potential reasons why, such as a compromised user account being used to send spam emails. A UserVoice item for changing the recipient limit also shares this concern. Another reason could be to reduce the number of recipients that users are able to address in a single email message to avoid potential misuse scenarios. Interestingly, at the time of writing this post, the latest Microsoft response to this UserVoice item states that it is working on customisable limits but has no timeframes. Hopefully this item will be updated to reflect roadmap feature ID 55025.

The roadmap item text also indicates administrative configuration flexibility considerations. Specifically, while the Exchange Admin Center will be able to make single or bulk changes to mailboxes, PowerShell will be able to configure a default setting for new mailboxes, should that be a requirement. The Exchange Online administrators within an organisation will likely welcome this flexibility.

According to the roadmap, this change is scheduled for Q1 in 2020. Although this is several months away, it gives time to think about this new feature and plan any implementation.

If you can’t wait for the next nugget, contact me using the form below, join one of our regular workshops and webinars, or checkout one of our other blogs.

]]>https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/exchange-online-recipient-limit-changes/feed/0#8 Azure Information Protection Client Updateshttps://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/azure-information-protection-client-updates/
https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/azure-information-protection-client-updates/#respondFri, 06 Sep 2019 13:33:35 +0000https://www.silversands.co.uk/?p=6652Over the last year or so, keeping up to date with the changes in the Azure Information Protection client has become a little more challenging. I saw that Microsoft had recently released version 2.2.21.0 of the AIP unified labelling client, so I thought it was a good time to write about it. You may be wondering why …

]]>Over the last year or so, keeping up to date with the changes in the Azure Information Protection client has become a little more challenging. I saw that Microsoft had recently released version 2.2.21.0 of the AIP unified labelling client, so I thought it was a good time to write about it.

You may be wondering why I put unified labelling in italics above. Well, first a little history. AIP has been around a while. AIP itself is a cloud service from Microsoft that allows documents and emails to be classified by assigning those documents or emails a sensitivity label. Optionally, labels can be configured to apply protection to the documents or emails if required. The labels and policy settings have historically been configured using the Azure Information Protection blade in the Azure portal.

While AIP is a cloud service, there is a corresponding client too. This client has historically been known as the Azure Information protection client. This client downloads the labels and policy settings from the Azure portal. It also gives users key functionality such as:

An add-in so that they can use the labels in Office apps

Right-click menu additions to Explorer so that the other files types can be labelled and optionally protected

If this client is being used, the button icon displayed via the Office add-in contains a padlock icon with the ‘Protect’ text below it. An example from the ribbon is shown below:

But as is the case with the cloud, things change. During Ignite 2018, Microsoft announced the ‘unified labelling’ platform. This platform gives administrators the ability to administer labels and policy settings from the Office 365 Security ad Compliance Center. If this is a new area to you, you can read the Microsoft blog announcement here.

With this platform came a new AIP client known as the Azure Information Protection unified labelling client. Microsoft informs that this client downloads the labels and policy settings from the Office 365 Security and Compliance Center, Microsoft 365 Security Center and Microsoft 365 Compliance Center. The AIP unified labelling client became generally available in April 2019. You can read more about this via the Microsoft blog announcement.

If the new AIP unified labelling client is being used, the button icon displayed via the Office add-in contains a stamp icon with the ‘Sensitivity’ text below it. An example from the Word ribbon is below:

However, something that could be confusing at first is that the unified labelling client still displays the padlock icon in the right-click menu addition to Explorer:

With the release of the new unified labelling platform and associated client, things became more complicated in areas such as:

Understanding the fact that there are now two AIP clients. With the new AIP unified labelling released, Microsoft now refers to the previous client as the classic client, hence why I used italics at the start of this post, to refer to the unified labelling client

Understanding the feature differences between two clients. Initially the new unified labelling client did not have feature parity with the classic client but this has improved with subsequent unified labelling client releases

]]>https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/azure-information-protection-client-updates/feed/0#7 Shared Mailboxes in Outlook for iOShttps://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/shared-mailboxes-outlook-for-ios/
https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/shared-mailboxes-outlook-for-ios/#respondTue, 27 Aug 2019 10:12:44 +0000https://www.silversands.co.uk/?p=6580Back in June this year I remember reading a post on Twitter from Microsoft stating that shared mailbox support was in TestFlight for Outlook for iOS. I also read recently that the functionality was now rolling out. As I had reason to setup a shared mailbox recently, I reminded myself that I should really have …

]]>Back in June this year I remember reading a post on Twitter from Microsoft stating that shared mailbox support was in TestFlight for Outlook for iOS. I also read recently that the functionality was now rolling out. As I had reason to setup a shared mailbox recently, I reminded myself that I should really have written about shared mailbox support in Outlook for iOS a few weeks ago. So just in case you’d missed the announcement, or have forgotten to setup your shared mailboxes in Outlook for iOS, I thought I’d write a quick note about it.

It’ll be a quick note because it’s a Tuesday morning and it’s just been a Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK! By the way, just in case you’re wondering what TestFlight for Outlook for iOS is, you can read about it here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/QkU4VS1s

Back to shared mailboxes. These have been around in Exchange for a while, giving the ability for a group of people to each access an additional mailbox shared between them. A typical example is a ‘support’ mailbox accessed by a team of support staff that each have their own personal mailboxes. In this example, when one of the support staff sends an email from the shared mailbox, the email looks like it has been sent from the shared mailbox rather than the support staff’s individual mailbox.

Adding a shared mailbox in Outlook for iOS is straightforward. In Outlook for iOS, you will see the Add Shared Mailbox option when you tap the Add Account button. An example is shown here:

If you have already setup multiple mailboxes in Outlook for iOS, you will then need to select the mailbox that has access to the shared mailbox. At the next screen, you will be asked to enter the email address of the shared mailbox after which you just tap the Add Shared Mailbox button.

After this, the shared mailbox is selectable the same way as any other mailbox. Below we can see a support staff member has opened the support shared mailbox and can see an email from User1:

As we would expect, a quick reply using Outlook for iOS from the support mailbox sees the reply being sent from the support mailbox and not the mailbox of the individual accessing the shared mailbox. Here’s the view of the reply that User1 sees:

This is a welcome feature for Outlook for iOS. Note that, according to comments I’ve seen from Microsoft, this feature only works with Exchange Online mailboxes.

If you can’t wait for the next nugget, contact me using the form below, join one of our regular workshops and webinars, or checkout one of our other blogs.

]]>https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/shared-mailboxes-outlook-for-ios/feed/0#6 Focus in Teamshttps://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/focus-in-teams/
https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/focus-in-teams/#respondMon, 12 Aug 2019 09:58:40 +0000https://www.silversands.co.uk/?p=6451Yes, you read that right: focus in Teams, not focus on Teams. So what does that mean? Added to the Microsoft 365 roadmap a few days ago was a new entry titled Microsoft Teams – Focus Mode. It sounded intriguing and I didn’t recall hearing about it before, so I had to take a look. Here’s what was shown in …

]]>Yes, you read that right: focus in Teams, not focus on Teams. So what does that mean?

Added to the Microsoft 365 roadmap a few days ago was a new entry titled Microsoft Teams – Focus Mode. It sounded intriguing and I didn’t recall hearing about it before, so I had to take a look. Here’s what was shown in the roadmap:

If you want to see the roadmap item for yourself, you can check out feature ID 53190 on the roadmap here. There’s also a corresponding entry in the tenancy Message Center.

Presence is available in Teams as well as in other parts of Office 365. Presence is nothing new really, since it has also been around in forerunners to Teams such as Skype for Business and Lync. Oh, and Office Communications Server before that. And Live Communications Server before that even! Now that I come to think of it, there was even a version of instant messaging in Exchange 2000 that I think had presence. Wow, it goes back a long way!

A user can set different presence states manually within Teams, such as Available, Busy and Do Not Disturb:

Presence is obviously great functionality to have when you want to understand whether someone is contactable or not. However, a user cannot set all possible presence states manually, since other automatically-generated states can be reflected in a user’s presence. Examples include In a call, Presenting, Out of Office, or In a meeting. These additional states sometimes involve hooks into other applications such as the calendar in Outlook.

The roadmap entry above alludes to the fact that there will be a new presence type, Focusing, set when a user has scheduled something known as ‘focus time’ using MyAnalytics. If you’ve not seen MyAnalytics before, you can find the Microsoft documentation here. However, the essence of MyAnalytics is around giving you insights into your personal productivity with one of the areas being your focus time. Focus time is the time you have available to focus on individual work and tasks. It is typically time that you have blocked out in your calendar during your working hours that is not a meeting involving other attendees – and before you ask, no, ‘Out of Office’ entries do not count!

Focus time can be added to your calendar via the MyAnalytics Outlook add-in. An example of this is shown here:

Based on my interpretation of the roadmap description, it would seem that the intention of the feature is for:

The teams presence hook in to the Outlook calendar to automatically set a presence state of Focusing for these focus time calendar entries

Teams notifications to be silenced during these focus period but with consideration for Teams priority access settings

One thing I have noticed is the popup message below when booking focus time slots in the calendar. This message indicates that the Teams presence status will be set to Do Not Disturb during focus time, rather than a status of Focusing that is mentioned in the roadmap feature. Is this an error? Time will no doubt tell.

I quite like the idea of the Teams presence showing Focusing as a status, offering further guidance on whether it’s an appropriate time to contact someone or not. It may even prevent the need for someone to set an internal Out of Office email status advising they are focusing on a task and may be slow to respond!

If you can’t wait for next week’s nuggets, contact me using the form below, join one of our regular workshops and webinars or checkout one of our other blogs.

]]>https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/focus-in-teams/feed/0#5 Form Themes – Suggested Background Imageshttps://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/forms-themes-suggested-background-images/
https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/forms-themes-suggested-background-images/#respondTue, 06 Aug 2019 12:20:08 +0000https://www.silversands.co.uk/?p=6373After last week’s big news regarding Skype for Business Online, it’s time for something a little lighter with this particular nugget about Forms. One could even call it a ‘lite bite’ as it’s smaller than last week’s updates and contains plenty of food references. Wait a minute…did I hear you say “What was the big news …

]]>After last week’s big news regarding Skype for Business Online, it’s time for something a little lighter with this particular nugget about Forms. One could even call it a ‘lite bite’ as it’s smaller than last week’s updates and contains plenty of food references.

Wait a minute…did I hear you say “What was the big news about Skype for Business Online last week?“. Perhaps I misheard. But if you did miss the announcement and my previous nugget, please head on over to here for last week’s big news.

Anyway, back to something a little lighter. I don’t know about you but I like Forms in Office 365. Forms make it very quick and easy to create a survey, poll or quiz. This is very useful in many areas, not least in surveys relating to Office 365. What better tool to use when adopting Office 365 than another Office 365 tool to conduct your surveys and gather feedback?

If you’ve fallen out of love with Forms and paused using it recently, perhaps it’s time to have another look. Forms has been getting better via incremental feature additions. Recently the branching capability of Forms has been improved as branching availability within sections of a form is being rolled out. This gives more flexibility in the structure and flow of the form. I’ve particularly liked the Forms integration available in Microsoft Teams, notably the quick poll feature when I want to gather opinions from within a team. It’s now great to see that it’s possible to create a quick poll in Outlook using the Forms Quick Poll add-in. Hop on over to the Microsoft support article for more details: Create a Quick Poll in Outlook.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft put out a preview of theme ideas for Forms. Theme ideas are, of course, ideas for the theme of your form – at least that’s how I read the headline announcement! If you’ve not used the feature before, you may see the theme ideas notification popup and the flash icon appear over the theme button after typing a title for your new form:

Notice I say you may see the theme ideas notification pop-up in one of the sentences above. That’s because it appears that not all forms may get a theme recommendation. Rather, it would seem that a suitable trigger word is required in the form title. I don’t know of a list of trigger words that Microsoft has worked into the system, but examples that I’ve tested include some common words that might be used in forms titles such as registration, satisfaction and quiz.

Another example of a trigger word appears to be lunch, perhaps if you wanted to create a form for ordering lunch – which is arguably the most obvious reason for using the word lunch in the title of a form I suppose. Anyway, I digress. With the word lunch now typed and the enticing flash icon now displayed, clicking the theme button shows me a selection of food-centric background images as you can see below. This is all starting to make me feel hungry again.

I quite like the look and colours of the top image so I select that. Hey presto! We now have a much more visually appealing form that will hopefully encourage people to respond. Otherwise they might miss lunch.

It’s great to see Microsoft adding incremental new features and enhancements to Forms, particularly those that hopefully increase engagement – like theme ideas.

If you can’t wait for next week’s nuggets, contact me using the form below, join one of our regular workshops and webinars or checkout one of our other blogs.

]]>https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/forms-themes-suggested-background-images/feed/0#4 Skype for Business Online – The Countdown Beginshttps://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/skype-for-business-online-the-countdown-begins/
https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/skype-for-business-online-the-countdown-begins/#respondThu, 01 Aug 2019 11:04:19 +0000https://www.silversands.co.uk/?p=6334Microsoft made a big announcement this week and I simply could not resist writing about it now. In its blog post here, Microsoft announced that “Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021.“. There was also a corresponding major update announcement in the Office 365 Message Center, namely post MC186815. An extract of …

]]>Microsoft made a big announcement this week and I simply could not resist writing about it now. In its blog post here, Microsoft announced that “Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021.“. There was also a corresponding major update announcement in the Office 365 Message Center, namely post MC186815. An extract of this post is below.

This has been coming for a while. At its Ignite conference in September 2017, Microsoft announced its new vision for ‘intelligent communications’. In this vision, it talked of a future that had:

Transformed meetings and calling experiences

More productive meetings and better ways to manage the meeting lifecycle

Better ways of managing the overload of communications being received continuously

Better ways to manage the meeting lifecycle and less emails in my inbox each morning? Yes please!

Central to this intelligent communications story was Microsoft Teams. The quote from Microsoft in it’s announcement above is that “Teams will evolve as the primary client for intelligent communications in Office 365, replacing the current Skype for Business client over time.“. Part of the journey involved bringing Skype for Business Online capabilities into Teams while at the same time making Teams the hub for teamwork in Office 365.

At that time Microsoft had already been putting many features into Teams to start realising this vision, including the much sought after guest access capability. However, many of the new features at the time were aimed at the communications capabilities of Teams. Other features such as audio conferencing and calling features were on their way.

Over the next year, Microsoft posted regular update announcements on how the roadmap was progressing. This culminated in a blog post announcement in August 2018, that Microsoft had completed its roadmap for bringing Skype for Business Online capabilities into Teams. This was quite an impressive timeframe. Even more impressive when you consider the many other important updates that had been engineered into Teams, such as support for retention policies and an increased number of data residency locations.

And here we are in the summer of 2019 with the announcement from Microsoft that Skype for Business Online will be retired on 31st July 2021. If you haven’t done so, now is the time to start planning that move to Teams. Fortunately, Microsoft has a good story around the migration to Teams and it’s something we here at Silversands have been involved with, in many different customer scenarios. The upgrade framework offered by Microsoft is comprehensive.

One of the great features of the migration is the coexistence modes engineered into the products, and these need to be considered for your migration. In the coexistence mode known as Islands, the users can run both the Skype for Business and Teams clients simultaneously. This means that features and capabilities can overlap, which may confuse some users. To help address this, there are other coexistence modes such as:

Skype for Business with Teams Collaboration. This introduces Teams into the environment for collaboration only, meaning chat, calling and meetings continue to occur via the Skype for Business client

Skype for Business with Teams Collaboration and Meetings. Start transforming the meeting experience by moving this feature to Teams in addition to the collaboration feature

The end goal is the coexistence mode known as Teams Only, where Teams is used for all communications and collaboration. To allow both Skype for Business and Teams users to communicate with each other during the migration, Microsoft offers great interoperability features too.

The Teams Only coexistence mode name makes it sound like the Skype for Business client is not required, but there are still scenarios where it may be for a while. For example, what if someone outside your organisation is still using Skype for Business Online and sends you a meeting request? Leave the Skype for Business client deployed and it will be used to join that meeting when the link is clicked.

As a Teams Only user, I do like the screen that the Skype for Business client displays when I launch it directly though. The message is loud and clear: Go to Teams!

There’s so much I could talk about regarding migrating to Teams, but I’d better stop here. There’s lots to do with Skype-to-Teams customer conversations!

And if you can’t wait for next week’s nuggets, contact me using the form below, join one of our regular workshops and webinars or checkout one of our other blogs.

]]>https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/skype-for-business-online-the-countdown-begins/feed/0#3 Yammer Q&Ahttps://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/new-yammer-feature-question/
https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/new-yammer-feature-question/#respondTue, 30 Jul 2019 09:58:15 +0000https://www.silversands.co.uk/?p=6302I know what you’re thinking: this is going to be a question and answer session on Yammer. Well no, not really. While it would have been nice to sit down and do a video-based Q&A on the topic of Yammer, this post is still about Yammer, questions and answers but in a different way. I’ll …

]]>I know what you’re thinking: this is going to be a question and answer session on Yammer. Well no, not really. While it would have been nice to sit down and do a video-based Q&A on the topic of Yammer, this post is still about Yammer, questions and answers but in a different way. I’ll be honest with you, I wrote the essence of this post a few weeks ago when I was forging the idea of Neil’s Nuggets in my mind – so it’s a little late, but better late than never I guess.

Anyway, back to the subject of questions and answers. Asking questions and receiving answers improves our own knowledge and engages other people across the organisation. When discussing Yammer with organisations we always discuss how Yammer can help drive engagement and discussions across an organisation. Questions are part of that engagement across an organisation and can be common in Yammer groups regardless of whether that group is frontline worker engagement, departmental discussions, technical support or communities of interest.

A new feature that has been rolling out to Yammer helps with questions and answers. I hope you’ve already seen this feature and are using it, but if not then fear not and let me explain. It is now possible to ask a question in a Yammer group using a dedicated question format and for one of the answers to be marked as the ‘best’ answer. The idea of marking a response as the best answer is nothing new; it is a feature that already exists in other collaborative platforms such as the Microsoft TechCommunity although in reality it is known as the ‘best response’ there.

When starting a new conversation in a Yammer group, the question format can now be selected:

Responses to questions can be marked as the best answer by the person who asked the question as well as the group administrators (that’s those with the little star on their profile pictures, to you and me). Marking the relevant answer as the best answer pins that answer directly under the question.

Why is asking a question using a dedicated question format with the ability to mark the best answer important? Surely the presence of a question mark at the end of a sentence indicates it’s a question anyway? Of course it does and I’ve just asked two questions to demonstrate that (of course, I understand that some languages such as Spanish use inverted question marks at the beginning of a sentence containing a question!)

Yammer has historically provided the ability for users to start a conversation with a question and ask for feedback from across the organisation. However, these conversations did not use a dedicated question format and provide a means to identify the best answer. Finding the best answer could prove challenging to someone else reviewing the conversation if the answer was buried deep in the middle of multiple responses. Marking the relevant answer as the best answer and pinning it directly under the question means this new Yammer feature makes it easier to locate the best answers to questions. I believe that’s a good thing as I’m always asking questions on Yammer. I’m also frequently looking to quickly find answers that are sometimes buried deep in the increasingly large pile of information out there!

Arguably a small but powerful change and one that can be considered for communication to Yammer users to ensure they’re aware of it and making maximum use of the feature.

And if you can’t wait for next week’s nuggets, contact me using the form below, join one of our regular workshops and webinars or checkout one of our other blogs.

]]>https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/new-yammer-feature-question/feed/0#2 Secure Private Channels in Teams – Finally?https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/secure-private-channels-teams/
https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/secure-private-channels-teams/#respondFri, 26 Jul 2019 12:14:44 +0000https://www.silversands.co.uk/?p=6281When I first floated the idea of writing this column twice a week, little did I realise that the first post would go out on a Thursday. Since I’ve got plans this weekend, that leaves today to fulfil this twice-weekly goal otherwise I’m off to a bad start! Fortunately, today I have something that I …

]]>When I first floated the idea of writing this column twice a week, little did I realise that the first post would go out on a Thursday. Since I’ve got plans this weekend, that leaves today to fulfil this twice-weekly goal otherwise I’m off to a bad start! Fortunately, today I have something that I feel is interesting and important to share. Having said that, hopefully that will be the case for every post!

Yesterday I was reviewing the Office 365 roadmap updates and something jumped out at me. If you go to the Microsoft Teams UserVoice site and look at the ‘Top Ideas in Teams‘ section, the idea titled ‘Support for Private Channels‘ is top with a figure of over 22,000 votes. This is a request that has been around a long time as Microsoft Teams has not historically offered private channels. In Microsoft Teams, all channels are currently available to all members of that team. Microsoft acknowledges this issue via a support article titled ‘Create a private channel in Teams‘, which gives the current guidance of creating a new team and restricting membership to the desired audience.

The subject of private channels has surfaced many times whilst I have been delivering Teams seminars and adoption sessions with customers. It’s possible that introducing private channels in Microsoft Teams has been a complex feature request for Microsoft to produce, due to the way that Teams integrates across many Office 365 services. It was good to see a comment from Microsoft a few weeks ago in the UserVoice site, that the private channel feature was in preview with a select group of customers. It was even better to see Office 365 roadmap feature ID 50588 for Teams secure private channels with a status of ‘in development‘ and a target release date of August CY2019.

This is something I shall be keeping an eye on as I start to think about the training and adoption requirements. It’s great to see that this feature is nearly here.

And if you can’t wait for next week’s nuggets, contact me using the form below, join one of our regular workshops and webinars or checkout one of our other blogs.

]]>https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/secure-private-channels-teams/feed/0#1 Welcome! And Welcome to a New Email Interfacehttps://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/welcome-new-email-interface/
https://www.silversands.co.uk/blog/welcome-new-email-interface/#respondThu, 25 Jul 2019 10:16:31 +0000https://www.silversands.co.uk/?p=6237Welcome to Neil’s Nuggets! This is a new column written by me – Neil Hobson – a Microsoft 365 consultant here at Silversands. The aim is to focus on providing regular news, views, snippets and other updates on all things Microsoft 365. Short but informative posts is the intention, of course. Apart from this first …

]]>Welcome to Neil’s Nuggets! This is a new column written by me – Neil Hobson – a Microsoft 365 consultant here at Silversands. The aim is to focus on providing regular news, views, snippets and other updates on all things Microsoft 365. Short but informative posts is the intention, of course. Apart from this first post, which will be a little longer since I’m writing this introduction.

‘Why?’ I hear you ask. Good question! Staying on top of everything happening in the Microsoft 365 space can be a challenging task in the fast-paced cloud world we live in; new and changed features come thick and fast. Even if you have seen an update, it’s easy to forget about it. Add into the mix general tips, tricks and news and it gets increasingly challenging to keep up and find relevant content. Plus I find it helpful to get the views and opinions of others, too.

I won’t be able to cover everything going on in the Microsoft 365 world, you understand. I have a day job to attend to and customers to delight. Not to mention my family that would like to see me occasionally! However, my aim is to update this column twice a week. At least, that’s what I told various people here at Silversands – shhh!

I’ve just mentioned the challenge of staying on top of everything in the Microsoft 365 world. For this first post, let’s commence with the theme of staying on top of Office 365 updates that impact your tenancy. As you most likely know, this can be achieved by accessing the Message Center found in the Office 365 Admin Center. In 2018, Microsoft released the Message Center reader administrative role to give those users assigned this role the ability to view Message Center posts. This meant that those users within an organisation responsible for keeping up to date with Office 365 changes could be assigned this role rather than a more powerful administrative role.

Some messages in the Message Center are considered a major update and hence likely to have the most impact to the organisation running Office 365. An example from 3 weeks ago is post MC184484 that informs the new Outlook on the web interface will become the default experience. An extract of this Message Center post is shown below.

For some time, users set for Targeted Release have had the ability to try the new Outlook web interface via the ‘Try the new Outlook‘ button, assuming that the organisation’s administrators had not disabled the button via PowerShell.

As the Message Center post shows, starting on July 22nd 2019, Microsoft will make this new web interface the default experience for users, commencing with Target Release customers first of course. Wait a minute…July 22nd was Monday this week. Yikes!

Also of note is the message from Microsoft in the Message Center post that ‘users will not be able to move back or see the classic experience‘. This is a great example of how, once an organisation has moved to cloud services such as Exchange Online, it has given up control of some changes and has to be aware of those changes that will directly impact end users. Consideration will likely also need to be given in other areas such as helpdesk awareness and any required updates to training materials.

If you’ve not looked at this new interface yet, head on over to this Outlook blog for details of some of the main features.

Or if you can’t wait for next week’s nuggets, contact me using the form below, join one of our regular workshops and webinars or checkout one of our other blogs.